Inquiry Question #2

Inquiry Group: Urban Education & Teens

Question #2:  What effects does technology have on the Urban secondary classroom?...Revisited.

This week I decided skip doing a search on Google and jumped right into Edutopia, the web site I used last week.  A search of the terms "urban education" and technology integration" returned 113 hits. Certainly a popular topic on this site!

I found an article which addresses the use of interactive whiteboards in the classroom.  The idea was adapted from the business world which seemed to adopt the technology at its inception in 1991.  I believe most teachers would agree with comments found in this article, including, "each lesson becomes an interactive one, and students are very motivated to learn."  One comment, directly related to urban education, caught my eye:

The board is very useful to demonstrate and teach editing and rewriting," says Parker, who works in an inner city school with many bilingual students. "There are pens in different colors that allow you to write directly into the Word document you're using and save the editing marks, which is extremely helpful. 

One of the board's benefits, Parker adds, is that all students can easily see the images, enabling the lesson to become an engaging group activity. "Instead of crowding around little monitors, the students take turns interacting with the computer," she says. "They also get support from each other. The teacher can use it to demonstrate, then the students can use it to practice, but without feeling like they're put on the spot." Parker uses the interactive whiteboard in class daily, often in conjunction with the Internet, she adds, "in all subjects: reading, literacy, math, writing, science, geography, and social studies."

So, the introduction of interactive whiteboards seems to increase students' motivation in urban settings...especially for bilingual students, but does it really help in other areas of urban education?  Another article on Edutopia addresses the use of technology for students of astronomy.

With the abundance of light polution in urban settings, the study of the night sky can be adversely affected.  Stars, planets and entire constellations can be blotted out by the intensely bright lights of nearly shopping centers.  A program, GLOBE at Night, created by astonomers and educators in 2005 and 2006 uses computers to assist students with stargazing.  This technology is introducing urban students to a branch of science that may not be possible for them to experience without the use of computers and internet.  GLOBE involves independent work at home and classroom work at school.  Who knows...the next great American astronomer may come from the heart of a big city like  New York or Los Angeles thanks to the integration of technology into urban education!

Mott Hall School, a STEM magnet school found much success with the integration of technology at their school:

Sources:

Cruishank, D. (2007). Board of Education: A Wall-Mounted Computer Monitor for Your Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/interactive-whiteboards

Oswald, H. M. (2009). Young Astronomers Study the Night Sky -- and Collaborate with Peers Online: An international stargazing event inspires young scientists. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/astronomy-globe-night-sky

Mott Hall School: STEM Projects Encourage Students to Excel. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/mott-hall-school-project-based-learning-video

Inquiry Question #1

Inquiry Group: Urban Education & Teens

Question #1:  What effects does technology have on the Urban secondary classroom?

Do a Google search with the words "technology and urban education" and you get 145,000,000 hits.  While I am sure not all of the hits have a legitimate connection to the topic, that is a lot of hits!  Where do you begin to look into this topic?  I began by going to the Edutopia web site at http://www.edutopia.org.  This site has many resources, including articles and videos, on a variety of education topics.

The first video which caught my eye was Students Speak Their Minds Through Digital Media, which follows a group of Latino teens from San Fernando High School.  These students "deliver powerful messages through video and the Web" in a technology team supervised by one of the school's social studies teachers.

Students Speak Their Minds Through Digital Media

http://www.edutopia.org/san-fernando-education-technology-team-video

From this example, we can see that not only are students learning 21st century technology skills, they are learning to look at and communicate their personal experiences in a way they have never done.  Videos are being made which touch on social issues...not social issues from a faraway place, but social issues from their own neighborhood.  This project has guided students to higher-level critical thinking.  Even though the technology team at San Fernando High School is no longer functioning, "graduates" of the program have created their own multimedia company (Alas Media) to not only continue using what they learned in high school, but to "foster the program's goals by working with San Fernando students on Saturdays to produce the iCan Film Festival."

This is just one example of the effects technology on the classroom has had on urban teens.  A search on Edutopia finds many more.

Sources:

Edutopia Staff. (2002). Multimedia Serves Youths' Desire to Express Themselves: Southern California's San Fernando Education Technology Team focuses on learning by doing and speaks to students' fascination with technology. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/san-fernando-education-technology-multimedia

Students Speak Their Minds Through Digital Media. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/san-fernando-education-technology-team-video

Annotated Bibliography Preview

Unit Information: I plan to teach a lesson on World War II to middle school social studies students with differentiation for grades six through eight.

Park, L. (2002). When my name was Keoko. New York: Yearling. (Amazon link)

Smith, S. (2008). Flygirl. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. (Amazon link)

Josephson, J. (2003). Growing up in World War II, 1941-1945. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company. (Amazon link)

Images from Amazon.com

Content Area Web Sites #2

Web site #1:

American Memory Page from the Library of Congress
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

How I would use this web site for instruction:

The above web site has a huge number of items which are usable in a classroom setting.  My plan for this web site is to find photographs from the Library of Congress collection which match my current lesson plan (i.e.: Civil War, World War II, Depression, Presidents, etc.).  These images can then be used to help students practice making an inference.  Students are shown the images, asked to think about the images, asked to write down two or three questions about the images, try their best to answer the questions from the information contained in the photograph, and then given known information about the images to see who well they did.  I have used this inference approach in a sample lesson plan about the United States Civil War and found that it engaged many students.

National Women's Party images taken from the American Memory Page of the Library of Congress.

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Web site #2

Historical Document: Sullivan Ballou Letter
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/ballou_letter.html

How I would use this web site for instruction:

The above web site contains the transcription of a letter written by Sullivan Ballou on 14 July 1861.  The letter was written to his wife and gives a final goodbye as Sullivan prepares to move out with the Union army.  This very emotional letter would be used by the students to create a "Found Poem."  This idea was borrowed from Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques by Jim Burke.  This exercise encourages students to create poetry from sources one may not think use.  It also encourages students to analyze a document to find its main points or purpose.

Content Area Web Sites

Web site #1:

Normandy Invasion, June 1944
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-eur/normandy/normandy.htm

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Web site #2

Invasion of Normandy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy

How I would use these web sites for instruction:

I intend to use these websites to demonstrate to the students what a dependable and an undependable web site looks like and contains.  I have created an "Evaluating Web Sites" worksheet which will be given to secondary school students to prepare them for a future research project.  Students will be directed to visit the above websites and use the below evaluation form to determine the dependability of each site.

Questions include:

• Who is responsible for the content of the site?
• How recent is the site?  When was it last updated?
• Does it seem that a specific audience is being targeted?  (Example: age, grade, race, etc.)
• Can you tell when the information at this site is a fact or an opinion?

Once they have completed the assignment, the students should have a better understanding of how to determine which web sites are more dependable than others.  This skill may require extra practice by some students.

Professional Organizations



There are professional organizations for everything. If there is a profession, you are certain to find a group related to it. As a student at Notre Dame of Maryland University, I am working to become certified as a social studies teacher at the secondary level.

The National Council for the Social Studies is an organization which can prove very helpful to the new or experienced social studies teacher. Their website has many useful features and can be found here:

http://www.ncss.org/

One of the most important features, National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies: A Framework for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, can be found here:

http://www.ncss.org/standards/curriculum

Social studies teachers may also be interested in the National History Education Clearing House:

http://teachinghistory.org/

Their web site includes a database of state social studies and history standards. Maryland's standards can be found here:

http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/state-standards?keys=&tid=187&tid_1=All